


wasted in waiting

by vexedcer



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coming Out, Nb Barry? Check. Nb Cisco? Check. Nb ocs? Check., Other, Slow Burn, discussions about gender, non-binary characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 14:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11337291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vexedcer/pseuds/vexedcer
Summary: Life is good, apparently. Cisco's not sure he's used to the idea yet.Or: Barry is oblivious to (some) things, Cisco is the queer-advice friend, and there is a gracious amount of pop-culture references.





	wasted in waiting

**Author's Note:**

> this fic has been in the works for nearly two years and it became a very different thing than the og plan. but. this version has been written in one week and i love it. 
> 
> Enjoy!!

Coming out is a thing that Cisco’s done before.

He remembers Dante catching him making out with David O’Brien behind the bleachers and the almost silent journey home that followed.

He'd been absolutely _terrified._

Dante kept his hand clenched on the steering wheel of the car for the whole ride home, white knuckled from gripping too hard; for a second Cisco wonders if Dante wants to throw a punch - but that’s not his brother’s style at all.

Dante is a talker. He uses charisma to get his way, and can be snide and cutting when he doesn’t. Dante doesn’t need his fists to prove a point when he has his mouth and his words.

They stop on the curb outside the house, and Dante cuts the engine. Neither moves, even seems to breath for seconds until Dante says in a voice slightly urgent and hushed, _be careful, Paco_ and -

Cisco realises he’s _scared -_ scared for _him_ . That the bullies will upgrade their arsenals with words like _queer_ on top of the usual racist and more generally demeaning tactics. Scared that the target on his brother’s back keeps getting wider and bigger and brighter before his eyes and there’s nothing he can do other than tell him to be safe.

The fear that had been previously twisting as resentful snakes in the pit of his stomach turns to shock.

They’ve never been close, totally at odds with each other on the average day, but Cisco still remembers the times Dante’s put a bag of frozen something on his black-eye, busted lip, swollen nose.

They drive each other crazy, but they take care of each other.

“What do you think Mami and Papi will say? Abuela?” Cisco stares out the windshield into the street. When he finally looks across the car, his brother’s face is troubled.

“Let’s not tell them for a while,” Dante says, and what he really means is _they’ll be upset._

They climb out of the car and into the house, and they don’t talk about it (for a few years).

No one at S.T.A.R. Labs ends up caring, really - there’s one guy who works in HR that gives him weird looks but other than that, no one bats an eye when he mentions his college boyfriend, Liam, or his childhood crush, Sophia.

No one really cares about his hair either; sometimes Wells reminds him to pin it back when he’s working, but that's about it. Caitlin lends him hair ties, which he never actually sees her use, which he always managed to have lost or snapped by the end of the day. They become good friends.

His mother though - she hates it. Every time he sees her - which, admittedly, isn’t very often anymore - she says, “ _Mijo, you need to cut your hair.”_

And she says it with that frown, the one that it seems all mothers have when their child is doing something they disapprove of. His father doesn’t say anything, but Cisco knows he agrees. Dante stays silent.

But his hair - it’s important to him. He grew it out when he left for college, because his parents weren’t there to tell him to cut it, and because everyone says college is when you start experimenting (which, ha, how ironic, because _science_ ).

He gains a mechanical engineering degree and a head full of thick wavy locks that smell like raspberries from college, and the rest - well, is history.

So lots of things have changed over Cisco’s life but the coming out thing doesn’t, really.

“- and she said that Greedo shot first, so I knew that she wasn’t the one,” Cisco recounts jokingly, tinkering with the disassembled coffee maker while Barry lounges with his ankles resting on the end of his workbench.

It’s been a slow week.

The real reason he’s not going for another date with this cute girl he’s been seeing is she chewed too loudly. Super petty, he knows, but everyone has their peeves, right?

The Greedo thing is just a nice cover.

Barry turns the page on one of the comics Cisco left lying around, and it speaks of how relaxed Barry is that he goes at a normal pace.

It's been a _very_ slow week.

“One day, you'll find someone you can watch Star Wars with in peace,” Barry says, not looking up from the issue in his lap.

“Nah,” Cisco says, eyes on the pieces of coffee machine in his hands. “It's not fun when you agree on everything, then there's nothing to talk about.”

Barry hums in agreement, flicking the page gently.

“I went on a date with a guy who liked the prequels about six months ago and I never called him back. There's debate and then there's just being flat out wrong.”

Cisco digs a little deeper into the almost completely deconstructed drip mechanism, expecting Barry to scoff at the very idea, but his friend remains silent.

Cisco looks up to see shock colour Barry’s face. “What?”

Barry gets that deer-in-the-headlights expression, opening his mouth and closing it before saying in that nervous bumbling tone of his, “I didn’t know that that was something you did - go on dates with guys.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Which - !” He adds quickly, taking Cisco’s surprised silence as something uncomfortable, “I’m totally fine with, one hundred percent a-okay - I should just stop talking, shouldn’t I?”

“Oh, definitely, dude,” Cisco agrees, watching Barry cringe at his own awkwardness and drop his face into the hand of the arm poised on the rest of the chair. _You’re hopeless, Allen,_ is all he can think at his friend.

They fall into a relative silence as Barry recovers from foot-in-mouth disease and Cisco puts the screwdriver in his hand down.

“You really didn’t know?” Barry opens his mouth as if to speak but just ends up shrugging. “Dude, I talked about how hot Chris Evans was for like ten minutes last week.”

“I just thought you admired him as a person!”

Cisco snorts. “I totally do, but have you seen his ass? It’s wonderful.”

Barry laughs, easing the last of the tension from the room. There’s a soft splat as Barry puts his feet back on the linoleum. Cisco hums as he gets up to search for a smaller screwdriver on the bench behind him.

“So are you bi or pan or queer?” Barry asks, before backtracking, “Wait, should I even be using that word?”

“If you're straight, not really.” He looks at Barry over his shoulder, elbows deep in his tool kit. “I use it about myself because I’m attracted to a lot of types of people, and I don’t mind if you use it about me.” He pulls out the screwdriver he was looking for and goes back to the deconstructed coffee maker. “But don’t just presume everyone’s fine with it - it’s a word with a lot of history.”

He looks thoughtful for a second before it clears away into something softer and genuine. He leans over to punch Cisco’s shoulder softly. “Thanks for telling me dude.”

Cisco smiles back, actually touched for a moment. His chest feels warm in a way he can’t describe

“But seriously, who unironically likes the prequels?”

That slow week melts into three of very fast paced ones. It seems like every person with ill-intent decided to enact their Super Evil Plan one after another. Barry has stopped a record number of bank robberies, malevolent metas, assaults, and cats stuck in trees in the last week alone.

Cisco goes on a date he’s had to postpone three times with a guy he met in line at Jitters, but it ends up being a flop - which really sucks, because the guy is super beautiful. They have nothing in common other than their coffee orders and a belief that Kirk and Bones were _totally_ fucking in the Original Series.

Cisco groans aloud while Barry laughs. “It’s not funny, Barry, he looked like a greek god!”

The comms crackle a little with the wind - “No, I just always thought Kirk and Spock were getting it on.”

Cisco raises an eyebrow even though Barry can’t seen him. “Why not both? Kirk definitely wasn’t into monogamy.”

Caitlin gives him a pointed look from across the console. “Barry, we think the meta is hiding out by the docks.”

The metahuman that Cisco names Hydro ends up being a scared teenager trying to control their powers. They’re actually a pretty sweet kid, just really anxious and frightened by the sudden onset of their waterbending abilities.

They initially burst some pipes in their parents’ house and overflowed a fountain in the middle of the city before hightailing it to the waterfront.

“His parents were really cool about it, they just kind of took it in their stride. He -”

“They,” Cisco corrects him.

“What?”

“I talked to the kid when I was setting up some power dampening cuffs to help them out and their pronouns are they-them.” Cisco chews on the straw of his cup.

Barry looks confused. “I don’t get it.”

“They’re non-binary.”

Barry still looks confused. Cisco sighs and turns his chair to face his friend a little more directly.

“Our new friend Lin, aka Hydro, isn’t a guy or a girl. They exist outside the binary of male and female. So like, Smoky Quartz from _Steven Universe_ but with two arms and no yo-yo.”

Barry looks thoughtful. “I didn’t know that was a thing.” He sways his chair softly side to side. “How’d you learn about it?”

“College. We had a GSA but it was mainly for LGBT+ people to mingle. A few friends of mine were non-binary.”

“Are you - ?” He gestures towards Cisco's person vaguely and his voice falters as he asks, like he doesn’t quite know if what he’s saying is the wrong way of saying it but hey - he’s trying.

“Meh? I guess but I’m not super concerned about it.” Cisco slurps on his slushie for a moment. “All I know is my legs look damn good in a skirt.”

Barry laughs, and then speaks as his face softens. “You could wear skirts here, I don’t think anyone would really care.”

Cisco looks at him with a sort of happy disbelief. “Really?”

“Yeah! We fight sci-fi villains every week.”

“Except for Lin.”

“Yeah, except for Lin. But we have superpowers, a guy wearing a skirt isn’t weird.” Barry considers it for a moment. “Joe might have some questions, but - ” he shrugs, “It should be fine.”

He doesn't wear a skirt to the Lab, at least not soon after that conversation, but this new kind of openness with Barry is nice.

Life continues as normal; or as normal as their lives ever are. Normal has become a very loose term as of late because of the supervillains and the time travel and the, y'know, stuff.

The whole gang watch the entirety of the _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy, extended editions, on a pile of pillows and throws on the floor of a disused room in S.T.A.R. Labs, because Jesse and Harry haven’t seen them (Cisco knew Earth-2 was bad; no hobbits? No dwarves? No Orlando Bloom? Just terrible). Cisco rigs up a projector and surround sound and produces the DVDs while Barry, Iris and Wally cater the event with various snack-food items.

“You got me plantain chips?” Cisco asks as Barry hands him off the bag. He didn’t think Barry even noticed that they were different from regular chips.

He shrugs. “You like them,” he says simply like he hasn’t just touched Cisco’s heart in an unexpected way. He settles down on the now padded floor next to him.

He then gives Cisco a shit-eating grin. “And you'll eat all the popcorn if you don't have them.”

Cisco drives his elbow into Barry's side as hard as he can. “We were having a perfectly good moment until you said that,” He sends him a disapproving glare. “Rude.”

Jesse finishes the 12 hour marathon a die-hard fan and Harry doesn’t criticise it to hell, so Cisco guesses he at least enjoyed himself. Caitlin fell asleep mid-way through _The Return of the King_ \-  which Cisco is offended by, because _it’s the best one._ She’s never going to live it down, until Cisco does something equally as embarrassing and they’re even again.

(Cisco’s just glad she wasn’t awake to see him and Barry cry when Sam gathers Frodo up in his arms on the rocky slope, the swell of music making his chest clench- no, he can’t even think about it or he’ll end up weeping.)

Life is good, apparently. Cisco's not sure he's used to the idea yet.

Someone knocking on your door at midnight is suspicious though, even if you have a good normal life that doesn't include close contact with various superheroes and actual legitimate enemies.

So when it's midnight and someone knocks on Cisco's door, his first response isn't to put on pants (because who wears pants when they're at home?), it's to grab the baseball bat that's propped up near his front door.

(He doesn't think about the chance that metas with grudges have weaknesses to baseball bats because the likelihood is _low._ )

It ends up being unnecessary because Barry's the one knocking.

“Hi,” Cisco says, confused. Barry definitely did not preplan or forewarn that he'd be stopping by, so his confusion is completely warranted.

Barry steps around him into his apartment in a blur of movement.

“Come in?” he adds, closing the door on the now empty hallway.

Barry actually looks kind of wrecked. His hair and clothes are more windswept than normal, than a quick Point A to Point B run can account for. There's dark circles under his eyes that Cisco had missed in the daylight, but now look like bruises.

In conclusion: Barry Allen is a mess.

“Sorry for just dropping by, I should have called.”

“Dude, it's fine. You gonna tell me why you look like you ran to Star City and back in your civvies?”

Barry rubs his hand over his face and down on to his neck in a move that shows his discomfort.

“Or not - we could watch _Star Trek: The Original Series_ and eat too much popcorn.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

Cisco grips Barry's shoulder for a moment in a way he hopes is reassuring. “You pick an episode, I'll get the snacks.”

They watch three episodes and eat two bags of microwaveable popcorn before Barry finally seems to be more calm and collected. Cisco also breaks out his in-case-of-emergency pack of twizzlers, because it's that kind of night.

When the original theme plays them out, Cisco turns off the TV and sits up to look at where his friend is slumped down the couch.

“Are we gonna talk about what got you so worked up you arrived on my doorstep at midnight or nah?”

Barry takes a deep breath and heaves himself into a more comfortable posture. He puts his hands in his lap and stares down at them as he starts to speak.

“Do you remember - when you told me about Lin, and how they weren't a boy or a girl?”

He peers up at Cisco through his eyelashes. Cisco nods - he’s actually kind of surprised; that was a month and a half ago. He keeps his face neutral as Barry goes on.

“Well - when I went home, I started researching it, non-binary stuff. I just wanted to be more educated, understand it so that if it came up again I wasn't completely clueless.”

Barry keeps looking at his hands, which are twisting themselves up into knots. Cisco's almost sure he knows where this is going, but he lets Barry go at his own pace. This one just happens to be a lot slower than usual.

“But then things started to - I don't know, make sense? Like how it could change over time and be fluid and that - you could be more than one thing at once.”

“What are you saying, Barry?” Cisco says, voice light and controlled and prompting.

Barry swallows and looks up with his voice small and quiet, almost a whisper, “I think I'm non-binary.”

Cisco gives him a small smile and punches him gently on the arm. “You said it out loud! Proud of you, dude.”

Barry laughs quietly, relieved and happy. “Thanks. And sorry for just showing up without warning, that wasn't cool.”

“Any and all wrongdoings are forgiven, trust me.” Cisco watches the last dregs of tension ebb away from his friend’s body. “Really, dude, I'm happy for you. Thanks for telling me.”

They don’t talk about it again for a few days, but Cisco can already see the change in him; smiles more genuine, more laughter, more banter.

Cisco goes on a date that weekend and the girl is lovely, absolutely charming and funny, and any other night he'd totally love to get breakfast with her, but something's off. Whether it's him or her, he's not sure but he walks her to her taxi, kisses her cheek and doesn't promise to call her.

Life continues.

There’s a rare moment of peace in the cortex where it’s just him and Iris; Barry is at his actual normal-person job (being a superhero doesn’t pay nearly as well as he thought it would when he was a kid), and everyone else is off doing their own thing elsewhere.

(He’s pretty sure Wally and Jesse snuck off together which is something he is definitely _not_ going to admit to either of their fathers.)

Cisco and Iris rarely spend alone time together, there’s usually another West around. They don’t have a whole lot in common outside of their resident speedster and the disasters that surround him, but their relative silence as they work separately in the same space is nice.

The news report Iris is writing up had something to do with some drugs bust on the outskirts of the city. He remembers when the perps had been brought in, rowdy and cussing out everyone in the room.

“Y’know, Barry talked to me about the gender stuff,” Iris says suddenly, sipping her coffee.

Cisco looks at her, and her face is carefully arranged into a neutral mask.

“What did you think?”

“When we were kids,” she starts, ignoring the question - although Cisco thinks he will have an answer by the end of the story. “Barry really liked it when I painted his nails. We were twelve, I think.” She puts the mug she's been holding down and Cisco senses that she's hesitant.

“What happened?”

She purses her lips. “Barry got a lot of flack from people in school about his dad, but Girder - Tony was the worst. When we came back from summer vacation, Tony started making fun of him for the nail polish, so he never let me paint them again.”

“Ask him if he wants you to do it again,” Cisco tells her. “Let him know you're here for the long haul.”

Iris smiles at him. “Thanks, Cisco.”

Cisco wonders when he became the queer-advice person. He remembers his friend Arin being that friend while in college, a brain like a comprehensive manual and dictionary for all things queer and trans.

He doesn't think he'll ever be the agony-pibling that they were.

So when Barry says “I think I’m going to come out to Joe” in a rush, Cisco just blinks at him over his sandwich.

“Was that a sentence or an exhale?”

“I'm going to come out to Joe,” he says again, clearer and less super-speedy.

Cisco swallows his mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. “That's nice, dude.” He watches Barry nervously fidget for a moment, his brow furrowing. “That is nice, right?”

“I don't know,” Barry says on an nervous breath. “I know Joe's probably going to be totally fine with it but -”

“Hey, woah, dude,” Cisco cuts across him, placing his half-eaten sandwich down. The dude looks like he's going to work himself into a panic attack. “You know you don't have to come out if you don't want to, right? Doesn't mean you're any less than who you are.”

He puts his hand over Barry's where it's clenched against the surface of the table.

“Joe's going to be fine with it - he's an awesome guy and he loves you so much. Something like this isn't going to make him stop.”

It seems like Barry deflates in front of his eyes; his shoulders drop, his eyes close, and he lets out a long breath of air.

“Thanks, Cisco. I needed to hear that.”

Cisco picks up his sandwich with his free hand and keeps eating. The silence that settles is comfortable.

“Cisco,” Barry says after some time, “You're still holding onto my hand.”

Cisco starts to move, but in a flash Barry's hand is flipped and curling their fingers together.

“Is this okay?” He asks shyly, biting his lip.

In response, Cisco grips tighter. Barry's resulting smile is nearly blinding.

The last ten minutes of Cisco's lunch break are spent holding Barry's hand while he arranges a night “just the two of them” with Joe over the phone. His stomach flutters when he realizes that Barry's nails are a soft powder blue colour.

Barry calls him at midnight (midnight seemingly has become something of a witching hour for them) to tell him that Joe “was totally supportive - he's still kind of confused so I promised to email him some of the resources I found online, but you were right.”

They make small talk for a few more minutes before they hit the hay.

The touching just becomes exponential after that. Cisco's never been an especially tactile person, but that was because he didn't get along with his family and he didn't have any real friends until college.

He's never felt the urge to embrace people the way the West family seems to - Barry and Iris always have a hand to offer, on shoulders and arms, around backs in hugs. Even Joe has his quirks, tipping coffee mugs together and pats on the back. Wally didn't even grow up with Iris and Barry, but he's definitely the same.

And Cisco's not complaining, not _at all_. He feels welcomed and comfortable and wanted by these people. But Barry -

Cisco figures he's had it bad for a long time. Maybe even as far back as when he bolted upright in the cortex, Lady Gaga playing in the background, and opened his mouth.

At first, it was Barry's looks - Cisco didn't entertain thoughts about Barry's conventional attractiveness when he was still comatose because that's inappropriate and unfair. But then Barry turned from Barry-struck-by-lightening to Barry-the-superhero to Barry-Cisco’s-friend.

So appreciating Barry's face and body was fine. It wasn't like he was being creepy or extra about. He noticed it the same way he noticed that Iris was beautiful and that Jesse had an amazing smile.

But then as he drifted from superhero to close friend, watching _Sharknado_ together on Cisco's couch at four am, he realised he caught feelings, which - was fine. Barry was in unrequited decade-old love with Iris so nothing would ever happen, so it was all _fine._

Until Barry put his foot in his mouth upon the reveal that Cisco Ramon was not heterosexual, thank you very much. With them getting closer and closer, Cisco now gets that he's fucking in love with the idiot.

Dammit.

“What's wrong with you?” Joe asks, startling him out of his thoughts, because the universe really likes to fuck with Cisco in more ways than super-powered super-assholes. Joe raises his eyebrows at him as he sips his coffee when Cisco doesn't answer right away.

“Uh - nothing, everything's fine.” _Smooth._

Joe glances around them, taking in the bullpen filled with people. Then he looks out towards the empty atrium. He tilts his head intentionally towards the dividing doors, his gaze pointed as it follows the movement of his head.

They stand off to the side in the little corridor that leads to interrogation rooms, the closest thing to privacy they have in the precinct.

“Seriously, kid, what’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, really,” he says, trying to be as convincing as possible. “I’m just tired, I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Joe obviously doesn’t believe him. “Uh-huh, so this has nothing to do with the fact that you’re in love with Barry?”

Cisco freezes. “What? In love with Barry - ? Pfft, what, no -”

“Cisco, c’mon,” he interrupts. “I watched Barry be in love with Iris since he was a little kid, I know what besotted looks like.”

Cisco feels his shoulders slump. He pinches the bridge of his nose for a second to try put off the headache that’s starting to build up. “Is it really that obvious?”

“Not to him.”

“Dammit.” He takes a few deep breathes.

“You’re good for him, Cisco,” Joe says. “You work well together, you have each other’s back, you help him with the gender stuff.” His tone turns hushed, earnest as he grips his shoulder, “I care about the both of you, and I want you both to be happy. You make each other happy.”

He finishes speaking with a kind of finality, like that’s all he has to say.

Cisco tucks some of his hair behind his ear. Barry said Joe was good at pep talks and emotional stuff, but he didn’t mention how the Detective could floor him with a total of, like, five sentences. That’s a talent.

Cisco stands in shock for a couple of seconds. Joe sips his coffee, allowing Cisco to regroup.

“Thanks, Joe,” Cisco says in what he hopes is a steady voice.

Joe takes the gratitude with just a nod of his head. “For what it's worth, I think Barry probably feels the same way. Like I said, I know besotted.”

When Cisco finally gets home at the end of the day, he exhausted - between his brain replaying Joe's words over and over, and actually doing his job, he feels ready to drop the minute he walks in his front door.

But of course, _of course_ , Cisco's brain doesn't want to power down for the night.

These past few months have been amazing, spending time with his best friend.

He's really liked helping Barry, being a support in a way that's not “I'll build tech so you don't die!” or “the world's ending and everyone's feeling kinda desperate right about now.” It's been new and different in a way that feels more intimate.

You'd think that seeing the guy in a coma for months, bloody and broken, emotionally raw, fighting together, breaking bread and eating together, being a part of a found family with him would feel _intimate_ , but.

There's a whole new layer of Barry Allen he's managed to peel back, that Barry's ripped apart to show him voluntarily. Seeing the person beneath the superhero costume is thrilling, but seeing the soul beneath the skin is - powerful somehow.

It feels off-balanced, though.

Cisco knows that Barry doesn't expect anything from him. That Barry is happy to hear his experiences, but in no way does he demand it. He doesn't force Cisco to be more or less than he is, give more than he has.

Cisco _wants_ to give. So he does. He gives him his trust.

In the bottom of his wardrobe, folded neatly away is the gift that Arin pressed into his hands when they were approaching Graduation fast. He'd already been contacted by S.T.A.R Labs then, been offered a job working on their particle accelerator.

It was the start of the rest of his life, he just didn't know it yet.

Arin gives him the soft package, wrapped in colourful paper, in the living room of someone's off campus apartment. All of his friends are drinking the mix of cheap vodka, box wine and beer that decorates every flat surface.

The thing is long and flowy and a deep burgundy colour and it flutters around his calves.

Up until then he'd only ever borrowed his friends’ stuff, whoever took pity and decided to lend him mid-thigh reaching skirts and knee-length dresses.

He wasn't lying when he said that skirts made his legs look great, but the longer cut is definitely more his style.

It still fits as perfectly as it did that night. The elastic waistband is snug around his body, and he feels comfortable.

(He travels via breech to the Lab, because as comfortable as he is, he worries about how safe he would be on his regular bus.)

Walking in the skirt is freeing; he hasn't worn it in forever just because he hasn't felt the desire to, but today the soft fabric floating at his shins feels perfect.

“You look nice,” is all Caitlin says when he walks into the Lab. He smiles at her.

He ends up in his workspace, where this all started a little over two months ago.

They've had a surprisingly calm week, which Cisco appreciates given all if things he's had to think about recently.

Barry arrives around noon with a bag of _Big Belly Burger_ in his hand. He stops short just in the doorway, taking in the skirt and Cisco's hair, messy from running his fingers through it.

“You look - nice,” he manages to choke out.

Cisco smiles, and suddenly Barry is next to him, in his personal space, a hand with a soft gold nails hovering less than an inch from the fabric over his hip.

“Can I - ?” He asks, his voice quiet in the otherwise still room. Cisco nods, and the hand is softly gripping his side, the wine material bunching under his fingers. Cisco can feel his heart thundering a million miles an hour, with the anticipation.

They’ve been leading up to here for what seems like forever and Cisco decides this is the moment to make the months wasted in waiting end, so he places his hand against the column of Barry's throat and kisses him.

Barry tastes faintly of coffee and even fainter of mint toothpaste. His mouth is soft but firm and the stubble on his upper lip scraps his skin.

When they part, Cisco chuckles. “So you like the skirt, huh?”

“I like you,” Barry replies, his eyes moving from the material still gathered in the hand on his waist to Cisco’s face inches from his. His eyes are wide and honest. “I like all of you - I definitely like the skirt, you look really good, but I like all of you whether you're wearing a skirt or _Star Wars_ boxers.”

Cisco butts his forehead gently against Barry's. “I guess you can use the word queer after all.”

Barry laughs, and they’re still so close together that Cisco can feel it against his face. “Yeah, I guess so.”

And because life really just can’t give Cisco a break - the metahuman alert app pings on both of their phones and a moment later, Caitlin calls their names on the intercom.

“My place, nine?” Cisco says, trying to hold the moment for as long as possible. Barry smiles, nods and speeds away. “Bring pizza!” Cisco shouts after him.

Goddamn speedsters.

**Author's Note:**

> Half the pop-culture references in this are to things i'm not actually into i.e. Steven Universe, LOTR and Star Wars, but I think I did a good job with them. Regardless, if any of the references miss for whatever reason, that's probably why.
> 
> I'm non-binary and queer so this fic was written with personal and broader experiences in mind. also all of the characters on the flash are queer and trans and u cannot stop me.


End file.
